Highness
by Kay Taylor
Summary: Alanna, Jon, Roger and George. Implied slash. The weight of the Crown weighs on Jonathan's shoulders...


There are many ways to become King, and Jonathan thinks he knows them all. He's been schooled in usurpers, tutored in secession, with always that faint reminder in the back of his head - you _will_ be King, they can't understand that, can't even begin to imagine.   
  
He thinks he knows them all, and to prove it, he learns his father's line off by heart, backwards and forwards and with the date of their deaths. Roderick to Jeremy to James to William. And after the lessons, the names of the dead Kings chant in his head.  
  
He was taught by his cousin, of course - who was a usurper himself. Duke Roger with the wide, easy smile and the slate-grey eyes, who stood behind Jonathan's chair as he traces maps of Tortall, and put his hand on Jonathan's shoulder with surprising gentleness. Duke Roger who gave him the Sickness. Duke Roger who sent him to the Black City. And he sees him even now, in dreams - even now.  
  
The dreams are always the same. The Sickness, the smell of incense rising up from the braziers around the bed. The chanting of the Mithran priests. Except this time, Roger is sitting at the foot of his bed, smiling with his lips and eyes and white, white teeth._  
  
I can't breathe,_ Jonathan says faintly. _I can't breathe._  
  
And the dream-Roger nods, and leans in close, and presses the back of his hand to Jonathan's forehead. They're singing the lament for the dead, outside the room and across the rooftops of the palace like a wave of wailing. Jonathan stirs uneasily in his sleep, and in his dream he's trying to explain it to Roger, to his smiling cousin -_  
  
I can't breathe - _  
  
Roger's hands are cool, and he brushes the hair off Jonathan's face. Then he bends his head down beside the young Prince's pillow, and Jonathan feels how hot and damp his breath is, almost as though the Duke has a fever himself. Jonathan's hands pluck at his shirt-sleeves, trying to get him to understand that it feels as though a crushing weight has come down on his chest, cracking the verterbrae and spreading the ribs wide, pressing against his lungs like a hundredweight of goose feathers.  
  
Roger's tongue darts out to moisten his lips - pink against the blackness of his beard, oddly incongruous, and then he smiles. It doesn't reach his eyes, and Jonathan remembers what Alanna once called the Duke - our smiling friend. Who leans as close as he can, and Jonathan summons up all his strength to make himself heard over the priests:_  
  
I can't breathe._  
  
And the Duke smiles, and nods. _Good,_ he whispers. _Good_.  
  
This is what Jonathan has grown up with, being the Prince of Tortall. When the person teaching him about the royal line is quietly trying to poison and curse and magic his way to the throne, and smiles all the while. When he has to remind his friends not to call him Highness'. And sometimes, it's like the weight on his chest in the dream, the weight that Duke Roger put there.  
  
There are many ways to become King, and Jonathan thinks he knows them all. Which is why he isn't surprised to find that all the ways to George's throne also end in death, because to him that's the way things work. There's the Court at the palace, and the court at the Inn, and there are two kinds of Kings. Only one wears a crown.  
  
George is the King of Thieves, and Jonathan isn't the King of anything - _yet._   
  
George teaches him to play pinfinger - it's a dangerous game, more dangerous than ever in the Court of the Rogue, where the knives are always whisper-sharp and the ale appears at Jon's shoulder in huge pewter tankards, clanking down on the sticky table as the young Prince tries his hardest to focus on not losing a finger. He cuts it too fine, sometimes, and nicks the skin between his fingers, where it will ache and irritate him for days. Even so, the look in George's eyes is approving.  
  
Sure you don't want to be joining _my_ court, Jon? he murmurs, leaning over in the pretence of watching a card game at the next table.  
  
Jon smiles, and shakes his head. Only when the Lord Provost convinces you to join _mine_, he whispers back, and George's eyes are bright as he laughs - this is a man who smiles with his eyes, with his entire face.  
  
The Inn is always crowded, always busy. It's easy for Jon to blend into the shadows and watch the rogues at play, as they drink and gamble and talk, always one hand on the hilts of their knives. He comes at night, almost as soon as the palace gates are closed, and returns just before dawn - sometimes with Alanna, sometimes without. It's easier when he's on his own, he realises, because Alanna catches the eye. Hard to blend into the crowds when your squire has bright red hair and bright purple eyes, and a temper shorter than a pigeon's attention span.   
  
So Jon has taken to slipping out of the palace by himself, to visit this other court. It's a different world to him, but somehow - in time - more familiar than his own.  
  
He learns to play poker, and he's surprisingly good at it. He tries to learn dice, and he's so bad at it that the thieves and their ladies howl in laughter, as the shame-faced noble youngster' loses all the coin on him in less than five minutes.   
  
You know, I thought young Alanna was a lad, George says to him conversationally, half-way between the bar and his customary seat at the Rogue's table. Jonathan turns around to find George's hand on his shoulder, and in the faint light of the fire and the torches he can see that the King of Thieves has the same scars as him, from learning pinfinger. White on tanned skin.   
  
Jon nods. So did I.  
  
George flashes him a grin. On the first day the lass came into the city - prettiest lad I'd ever seen, with those eyes.  
  
Jon swallows, suddenly aware that people are watching, stopping their business to see what the Rogue is doing. His hand on the quiet noble lad's shoulder. King to Prince. You mean -  
  
George nods, once, quickly. Slipped into my bedroom later that year, didn't she? Got me out of bed pretty sharpish. And, well, he looks down, Then she told me. Almost tore off the bindings around her breasts to make me understand.  
  
He squeezes Jon's shoulder, and heads back into the throng.   
Jon hadn't known Alanna was a girl until he was already half in love with her. Until he'd already seen her limp back to her room at dawn, bloodied and bruised from Ralon's bullying, and wanted _desperately_ to take her into his arms and into his bed, put his fingers through that fiery hair and kiss away some of the hurt. Until he'd spent the summer laughing with the other boys at her refusal to bathe - _looking back, how could they not have seen?_ - and wanting to see her underwater, all smooth and lissome and thin, like an otter with pale skin. Wanting to slip into her room after lights out and unbutton her page's uniform, run his hands over her chest, slip his leg between her thighs. She had made a _beautiful_ boy, and he had loved her.  
  
So had George, he sees that now. He fixes his eyes on the back of the Rogue's head, disappearing through the crowd, and wonders about that brief moment in the half-dark of George's room, the moment when he thought Alanna was a boy, and had her - _him?_ - trapped against the wall.  
  
Later that night, he follows the route Alanna described to him, along the balconies and rooftops behind the Inn, and arrives at a window. Hesitating for a second, he is silhouetted in moonlight by the shutters, stark against the night sky like the thief he isn't.   
  
And George steps out of the shadows, sweeping a mocking bow.   
  



End file.
